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The Sea and Cake News

The Sea and Cake

The Sea and Cake is a pop/rock group with a pronounced jazz influence, which formed in the mid-90s in Chicago, Illinois out of the ashes of renowned local bands The Coctails and Shrimp Boat. The group's name came from a willful reinterpretation (in the wake of an accidental miscomprehension) of "The C in Cake", a song by Gastr del Sol. Along with Shrimp Boat and The Coctails, groups related to the Sea and Cake include Tortoise and Gastr del Sol. Starting with 1997's The Fawn, the group has relied on electronic sound sources, such as drum machines and synthesizers, to color its music, but has retained its distinctive post-jazz combo style. The band has shied away from releasing singles, preferring the album format. Contrary to his multi-instrumentalist role in Tortoise, John McEntire (highly acclaimed producer, member of Tortoise and contributor to Red Krayola, Stereolab and countless others) essentially plays only drums in The Sea and Cake.

Members Sam Prekop(pop mastermind) and Archer Prewitt (visual artist and reknowned solo musician) each have released solo albums. The cover art of The Sea And Cake's releases are largely paintings by bassist Eric Claridge and photographs by Prekop. (Postcards of some of the One Bedroom-era photos were sold on the band's 2003 tour.) Prewitt has been involved in publishing his own comic books and doing graphic design.

The band was on hiatus from 2004 to 2007. A new album entitled Everybody was released in May 2007 and we at Popfrenzy were the proudest they could be in bringing them down to Australia for the very first time in March '08. The Sea and Cake. Fourteen years and seven albums after breaking post rock clichés the quartet are set to reconfigure your perceptions of indie rock and the form it imposes on song. In real time it won’t play out to be nearly as academic as it sounds, we promise.

Here's what others have said over the years about the Sea and Cake:

"Music that looks to the heavens but keeps its feet blissfully on the ground." -- GQ

"A warm sonic cocoon with synthesizer veins, it possesses the rare quality of making the listener feel like an active ingredient of the music." -- Billboard

". . . a downright staple of indie rock" -- Pitchfork Media

"The Sea and Cake have reconfigured pop for today's post-everything sensibilities, at once stripping it down and broadening its language." -- Alternative Press